There was no answer. The older girl gently turned the knob and looked in. The room was in moonlit whiteness. There, still in her rumpled blue and orange, the little butterfly back bare, the arms tossed frantically out, she lay, the whole figure prey to sweeping and tearing things. Minga was curled up on the bed. There was no doubt about the little shivers and shakes, she was sobbing. "Minga--precious!" Something big and devastating tore through the older girl's senses. She felt suddenly old, like Minga's mother. This motherliness, though Sard did not know it, was a keystone to her being; it was the thing Shipman had half seen, it was the beautiful balance of the Winged Victory. The girl sat quietly down on the bed; so this was another Law for her then; she must know keenly and helplessly the sorrow of others, she must blindly strive to learn how to help. Dora, Colter, and now little gay Minga. "Minga," urged the girl, pitifully, "don't cry like that--why, it's not that silly Bunch, is it? We don't care for them, we have other friends. Watts Shipman and--and---" Sard went a little vaguely over a possible list of "other friends." There was no answer, and she leaned down, trying to raise the buried face. "Honey, can't I know?" then urgently, "Minga, don't cry like that, it's--it's self-pity, isn't it?" Sard groped about to give expression to a thought that was hardly formed in her. "I suppose self-pity's one thing we must never, never let ourselves have," the girl said softly. There was a sudden cessation of sobs, and Minga slowly raising on her elbows turned up in the half light a broken face. "I can't help ... pitying myself.... I've been so--so crazy; and now," shuddering, "I can't play any more." "You poor little thing, poor little thing," Sard paused, her hand passed over the tousled head. This young face and hand were inexperienced, but Sard was like a pilot trying to pierce mists. "I guess we've always got to play," she said, "even when we--well, that Punchinello idea, you know. But anyway, Minga, you mustn't cry like that because it's wrong; it does something to your nerves. I remember they said it in the psychology class." "But I've done an awful thing," wept Minga. She sat up suddenly. "Sard, you don't know what I did to-night," Minga lifted her hand and passed it swiftly over her face as if she would brush away some new look of shame and repeated: "I've done the awful thing; I wouldn't have cared if it had been anyone else, but I felt wild after I had given Tawny back his ring and I thought I'd take a chance and so, oh, Sard, while we were dancing I told Watts Shipman I loved him, and told him in a silly way, a Cinny, Gertrude way, and that's the awful thing; for you see, Sard, I do love him. Oh, I do, I do," cried poor little Minga. "But I told him in that way, and he doesn't respect me." Sard, rocked by a surprise that bordered very nearly on hysterical laughter, crept up closer to the little sufferer.